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> Our word used to mean something. > But now? How can we hold a higher ground than China when our own police forces use the very same tactics against our own pr

> Our word used to mean something. > But now? How can we hold a higher ground than China when our own police forces use the very same tactics against our own protesters? How can we accuse the other side of building concentration camps when we have our own? But we’ve had things like this for a long time. The police have acted like they do for generations, we had concentration camps for Japanese people during World War II, and we’ve always done a variety of other reprehensible things (propping up brutal dictators, destroying native civilizations, institutional racism of every possible flavor.) Frankly, I’m shocked that our word ever meant something.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> we had concentration camps for Japanese people during World War II I study WW2, and it's important to be factual. The correct term is internment camps. Japanese-Americans usually lost their property, but the purpose was to locate them in central locations, not to re-educate or liquidate them, as our enemies did to the Allies. For that time in history, it could be argued that the decision made sense. Japanese subs did shell the US mainland, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii did help a Japanese aircrew try to escape after Pearl Harbor. Japan planned to return to Hawaii after Midway to occupy Hawaii. I think using the term "moral high ground" is not helpful for a number of reasons. However, the US did rebuild the world economy after WW2, mostly to prevent it from becoming aligned with the Soviet Union. Most of the world's national borders are descended from WW2. As leading historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson says, "[WW2 was German and Japanese soldiers machine-gunning unarmed civilians by the tens of millions.]"
- p_l 6y ago
  That's what concentration camp is for. To concentrate and control. There were separate death camps (sometimes combined) that involved direct train-to-killing-field pipelines, and most concentration camps involved work in horrible conditions, but that's because of further goals above relocation.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Not in the US.
    - wan23 6y ago
      That some concentration camps in other countries were also death camps is entirely the point. They are not the same thing, but they're just one step removed. In fact, thousands of people died in the American camps even though there was not an official policy of extermination.
      - jstarfish 6y ago
        Camps are a very whitewashed aspect of US history. Look at the forced marches and internment of Native Americans, POWs at Andersonville or anybody unfortunate enough to be in the custody of Joe Arpaio. We have a nasty habit of creating scenarios where death is an inevitable consequence without it being the official policy.
      - Stupulous 6y ago
        From some light research, it looks like 120,000 Japanese-Americans were put in these camps for 2-3 years and 1,862 died. In the country at large, if I'm reading this [1] right, 1,459,000 people died outside of the camps in the US, which had a population of 136,700,000. That's a ~1% base death rate per year, which would account for ~2/3 of these deaths in a year. This could be investigated further; was the average length of imprisonment less than a year, were the causes of death different than in the larger population, did economic conditions and racism increase the base death rate among Japanese-Americans in the first place, was the age distribution different among those the US bothered to move to camps, pushing their base rate lower? Evidently people died because of these camps, and it is incredibly likely that many of those deaths were racist hate crimes committed by US employees on US citizens. Even that aside, it was very much wrong it imprison innocent civilians on the basis of their race. 'Thousands died' does seem like a substantial overstatement when the only number I can find is less than 2,000 (it's from the US, so it may be biased). Probably a few hundred died as a result of these camps, mostly from disease. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1943_2.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1943_2.pdf
- throwanem 6y ago
  Victor Davis Hanson says a lot of things, including that Iraq II was a good idea - he was a minor but still fairly significant public relations voice in the neoconservative bloc that pushed that war into existence, to the enormous detriment of US interests in the Middle East and worldwide. As a classicist he's tolerable, if no more than that; in any century where the years count up instead of down, the man seems entirely at sea.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > using the term "moral high ground" is not helpful for a number of reasons The U.S. had a global nuclear monopoly for several years. It didn’t abuse it. That’s a hell of a high ground.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    The US is the only country to have used nuclear bombs in anger, and that was during it's nuclear monopoly.
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      > used nuclear bombs in anger Using a new weapon to end an existing war is one thing. Using a new weapon to start new wars is another. That delineation is independent of one's judgement of the weapon per se. They're both bad. But one is worse than the other. The U.S. had the opportunity to go on a mission of global military conquest. There was military support for nuclear war with Russia and China. The United States didn't do that, and I think that's a unique and admirable trait.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        Would you apply the same reasoning to any other country that used nukes to "end an existing war"?
        JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        > Would you apply the same reasoning to any other country that used nukes to "end an existing war"? Yes, using nukes defensively is less bad than using it to start a war. That doesn’t mean I support the use of nukes. WWII was unique in starting with no nukes and ending with them. We also didn't yet understand the long-term ramifications of the weapon's use.
        monocasa 6y ago
        So which conflicts since WWII would you OK the "defensive" use of nuclear weapons?
- 0134340 6y ago
  >For that time in history, it could be argued that the decision made sense. Japanese subs did shell the US mainland, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii did help a Japanese aircrew try to escape after Pearl Harbor. Japan planned to return to Hawaii after Midway to occupy Hawaii. It could also be argued that it made sense to do the same for Germans since we had a minority of Germans siding with Hitler and even holding Nazi rallies before we got involved in WWII. We weren't exactly good arbiters of fairness when it came to race either.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    There were American companies inclined towards blacklisting German Americans at least. FDR made it illegal for them to do that with Executive Order 8802, probably because German Americans were such a large portion of the population that blacklisting them (let alone interning them) would have threatened the war effort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_8802 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_8802 Note that in Hawaii, Japanese-Americans were a significant portion of the local population, about one-third. Of the 150k+ Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii, only 1,200 to 1,800, or about 1%, were interned. On the mainland US where they were a smaller portion of the population, far more Japanese Americans were interned. This discrepancy probably comes down to a matter of practicality again; one third of the population is just too many to intern.
  - goat_whisperer 6y ago
    I believe that US citizens of German descent were actually placed in internment camps during WW2. I don't think it was at the same scale as Japanese citizens but it did happen.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      A very small number did, relative to their portion of the population (which was large.) Anti-German sentiment was certainly present in America and the UK during the world wars. In response to Anti-German sentiment, the British royal family anglicized their name during WWI, changing it from House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to House of Windsor. In America, German Americans largely stopped speaking German in public (German was the second most common language in America and was spoken particularly often in Pennsylvania, remnants of which can still be seen today in "Pennsylvanian Dutch" culture.) However, treating German Americans as severely as Japanese Americans were treated, at least on the mainland, was probably too impractical to be considered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans#The_apparent_disappearance_of_German_American_identity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans#The_apparent_...
- jacquesm 6y ago
  You are conflating extermination with concentration.
necovek 6y ago
It's called media manipulation: US government has perfected a way to manipulate knowing and unknowing media outlets to spill out the news that serves their goals. Unsuspecting public just goes for it, especially since it's all too easy too fall into the self-righteousness (look at those nasty people doing that, they are nothing like us). Internet was a tool that allowed all sides to be equally heard (the fact that it was abused to disseminate fake news supports that claim even more), so only now it's too obvious what's going on. Oh, and other governments and organizations are catching up quickly with the same practice.

redis_mlc 6y ago

> we had concentration camps for Japanese people during World War II I study WW2, and it's important to be factual. The correct term is internment camps. Japanese-Americans usually lost their property, but the purpose was to locate them in central locations, not to re-educate or liquidate them, as our enemies did to the Allies. For that time in history, it could be argued that the decision made sense. Japanese subs did shell the US mainland, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii did help a Japanese aircrew try to escape after Pearl Harbor. Japan planned to return to Hawaii after Midway to occupy Hawaii. I think using the term "moral high ground" is not helpful for a number of reasons. However, the US did rebuild the world economy after WW2, mostly to prevent it from becoming aligned with the Soviet Union. Most of the world's national borders are descended from WW2. As leading historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson says, "[WW2 was German and Japanese soldiers machine-gunning unarmed civilians by the tens of millions.]"

p_l 6y ago
That's what concentration camp is for. To concentrate and control. There were separate death camps (sometimes combined) that involved direct train-to-killing-field pipelines, and most concentration camps involved work in horrible conditions, but that's because of further goals above relocation.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Not in the US.
  - wan23 6y ago
    That some concentration camps in other countries were also death camps is entirely the point. They are not the same thing, but they're just one step removed. In fact, thousands of people died in the American camps even though there was not an official policy of extermination.
    - jstarfish 6y ago
      Camps are a very whitewashed aspect of US history. Look at the forced marches and internment of Native Americans, POWs at Andersonville or anybody unfortunate enough to be in the custody of Joe Arpaio. We have a nasty habit of creating scenarios where death is an inevitable consequence without it being the official policy.
    - Stupulous 6y ago
      From some light research, it looks like 120,000 Japanese-Americans were put in these camps for 2-3 years and 1,862 died. In the country at large, if I'm reading this [1] right, 1,459,000 people died outside of the camps in the US, which had a population of 136,700,000. That's a ~1% base death rate per year, which would account for ~2/3 of these deaths in a year. This could be investigated further; was the average length of imprisonment less than a year, were the causes of death different than in the larger population, did economic conditions and racism increase the base death rate among Japanese-Americans in the first place, was the age distribution different among those the US bothered to move to camps, pushing their base rate lower? Evidently people died because of these camps, and it is incredibly likely that many of those deaths were racist hate crimes committed by US employees on US citizens. Even that aside, it was very much wrong it imprison innocent civilians on the basis of their race. 'Thousands died' does seem like a substantial overstatement when the only number I can find is less than 2,000 (it's from the US, so it may be biased). Probably a few hundred died as a result of these camps, mostly from disease. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1943_2.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1943_2.pdf
throwanem 6y ago
Victor Davis Hanson says a lot of things, including that Iraq II was a good idea - he was a minor but still fairly significant public relations voice in the neoconservative bloc that pushed that war into existence, to the enormous detriment of US interests in the Middle East and worldwide. As a classicist he's tolerable, if no more than that; in any century where the years count up instead of down, the man seems entirely at sea.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> using the term "moral high ground" is not helpful for a number of reasons The U.S. had a global nuclear monopoly for several years. It didn’t abuse it. That’s a hell of a high ground.
- monocasa 6y ago
  The US is the only country to have used nuclear bombs in anger, and that was during it's nuclear monopoly.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > used nuclear bombs in anger Using a new weapon to end an existing war is one thing. Using a new weapon to start new wars is another. That delineation is independent of one's judgement of the weapon per se. They're both bad. But one is worse than the other. The U.S. had the opportunity to go on a mission of global military conquest. There was military support for nuclear war with Russia and China. The United States didn't do that, and I think that's a unique and admirable trait.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      Would you apply the same reasoning to any other country that used nukes to "end an existing war"?
      - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        > Would you apply the same reasoning to any other country that used nukes to "end an existing war"? Yes, using nukes defensively is less bad than using it to start a war. That doesn’t mean I support the use of nukes. WWII was unique in starting with no nukes and ending with them. We also didn't yet understand the long-term ramifications of the weapon's use.
        monocasa 6y ago
        So which conflicts since WWII would you OK the "defensive" use of nuclear weapons?
0134340 6y ago
>For that time in history, it could be argued that the decision made sense. Japanese subs did shell the US mainland, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii did help a Japanese aircrew try to escape after Pearl Harbor. Japan planned to return to Hawaii after Midway to occupy Hawaii. It could also be argued that it made sense to do the same for Germans since we had a minority of Germans siding with Hitler and even holding Nazi rallies before we got involved in WWII. We weren't exactly good arbiters of fairness when it came to race either.
- catalogia 6y ago
  There were American companies inclined towards blacklisting German Americans at least. FDR made it illegal for them to do that with Executive Order 8802, probably because German Americans were such a large portion of the population that blacklisting them (let alone interning them) would have threatened the war effort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_8802 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_8802 Note that in Hawaii, Japanese-Americans were a significant portion of the local population, about one-third. Of the 150k+ Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii, only 1,200 to 1,800, or about 1%, were interned. On the mainland US where they were a smaller portion of the population, far more Japanese Americans were interned. This discrepancy probably comes down to a matter of practicality again; one third of the population is just too many to intern.
- goat_whisperer 6y ago
  I believe that US citizens of German descent were actually placed in internment camps during WW2. I don't think it was at the same scale as Japanese citizens but it did happen.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    A very small number did, relative to their portion of the population (which was large.) Anti-German sentiment was certainly present in America and the UK during the world wars. In response to Anti-German sentiment, the British royal family anglicized their name during WWI, changing it from House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to House of Windsor. In America, German Americans largely stopped speaking German in public (German was the second most common language in America and was spoken particularly often in Pennsylvania, remnants of which can still be seen today in "Pennsylvanian Dutch" culture.) However, treating German Americans as severely as Japanese Americans were treated, at least on the mainland, was probably too impractical to be considered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans#The_apparent_disappearance_of_German_American_identity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans#The_apparent_...
jacquesm 6y ago
You are conflating extermination with concentration.

necovek 6y ago

It's called media manipulation: US government has perfected a way to manipulate knowing and unknowing media outlets to spill out the news that serves their goals. Unsuspecting public just goes for it, especially since it's all too easy too fall into the self-righteousness (look at those nasty people doing that, they are nothing like us). Internet was a tool that allowed all sides to be equally heard (the fact that it was abused to disseminate fake news supports that claim even more), so only now it's too obvious what's going on. Oh, and other governments and organizations are catching up quickly with the same practice.